Q-Seattle Events: Tacky Tourist Clubs

SAU is our own little enclave, it seems disconnected from the rest of the world, including Jackson. We are a little happy conservative place where nothing happens, or if anything bad or dirty happens, it is swept under the rug. Everything in SAU is good. It's this whole psychological mind screw."

That's how Drew Hinkle, a gay student at Spring Arbor University in Jackson, Michigan, describes the school to Michigan's gay newspaper Between the Lines.

Another student interviewed by the paper asked them not use her real name. They call her "Jamie" in the story. She agrees with Hinkle about the isolation of the school:

The more classes I take, the more I hear about, even the professors will mention the bubble, that it makes SAU a safer place. That it's not penetrated by the outside world. They don't allow anything they believe to be non-Christian to stay in the bubble. They pretty much exile them off the campus.

Not surprisingly, Jamie said she'll be leaving SAU after this school year.

Julie Marie Nemecek, a professor and administrator at the private school will also be leaving SAU in June. Unlike Jamie, Nemecek's departure isn't through choice, but also reveals something about the bubble.

The Washington Blade's excellent online edition carried this wire report about Nemecek's termination in early February:

Christian university fires transgender professor
Complaint filed with EEOC

JACKSON, Mich. (AP) Feb 5, 7:58 AM
A private, Christian university is firing a transgender professor who began appearing as a woman on campus in 2005.

John Nemecek, 55, who goes by Julie Marie Nemecek and often wears a wig and dress, is fighting the dismissal by Spring Arbor University, which takes effect June 1.
The ordained Baptist minister has filed a discrimination claim with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

"I have worked hard for this university, have been praised for my performance, and I have done nothing immoral or sinful," Nemecek told the Jackson Citizen Patriot for a Sunday story.

Officials at Spring Arbor, which is affiliated with the Free Methodist Church, declined to comment to the newspaper. They said in a statement released by a public relations firm: "We expect our faculty to model Christian character as an example for our students."

Faculty who "persist with activities that are inconsistent with the Christian faith" may be fired, the statement said. In their response to Nemecek's EEOC complaint, college officials said the Christian mandate is critical to Spring Arbor and is protected by civil rights laws.

[See update below]

Both Drew Hinkle and "Jamie" told BTL that the "Christian mandate" at their school made the process of coming out doubly difficult. Hinkle told the paper that coming out to his friends and family had been emotionally wrenching. "I pretty much emotionally broke down," Hinkle said. "I can't keep hating myself like this, living two lives. There was no more choice I couldn't keep the secret anymore."

Jamie described a kind of oppressive heterosexuality at the school:

Jamie says the expectation of heterosexuality was suffocating. "It is the main goal of the students at Spring Arbor to come out of there with a wedding ring or an engagement ring. It was ridiculous. It pissed me off," she says. "Its put in your head that college is the main place you will find someone to be with for the rest of your live and you do not find them then your chances are more slim then they were before."

Jamie will leave SAU for a public college, but Hinkle says that he will stick it out at the school.

"I see it as a sign of -- for me, personally -- of defeat," Hinkle says of his plans not to leave the institution. "It would be like I gave up."

And accepting defeat, in Hinkle's mind, is tantamount to abandoning other LGBT students. Students he says have no voice. "I know that there are students in situations like where I was before I came out, was very effected by the homophobic community I was in and perpetuated by SAU. I had to find those kids and help them find their way out."

Both Jamie and Hinkle confirm that as many as four students may have attempted suicide in the past calendar year as a result of sexual identity crisis. That could not be confirmed by phone calls to Jackson's Foote Hospital, the closest hospital to the university or by SAU officials. In fact, SAU officials refused to return phone calls and emails seeking comment on the issue of LGBT students at Spring Arbor.

Supporting those students is key to both students. So important to them, in fact, they gave these interviews at great risk to their own academic careers at the university.

"I just hope that anyone who reads the piece that feels like they can't be themselves even around their friends, that they know it's not OK to feel that way. It's not OK to feel like you are wrong. You are not wrong. It's different but not wrong," Jamie said. "I think people shouldn't have to feel like the feelings they have or the relationships they have are wrong, even in God's eyes."

This great report in Between the Lines sheds useful new light on several different stories that have recently been moving over the various gay news wires. SoulForce, a group of Christian gay activists, have been traveling around the country on a bus, stopping at schools like SAU to pierce the bubble at each.

We've sometimes read about their exploits as a kind of spring-break protest tour. They often get themselves arrested while making their "statements" and and what they call "relentless nonviolent resistance." In the process, they generate local news stories accompanied by a flood of press releases and self-made videos.

That's being unkind, of course. Their protests are no doubt noble and admirable. But, it's been our experience that activists of just about any stripe are supremely capable of stating the nobility and all-consuming importance of their own cause and don't need much help from the likes of us. Soulforce is no exception.

But it hasn't been all that clear to us who or what the ultimate aim is of the bus-tour protests. Do they think they're going to change the minds of the future right-wing conservative leaders by disrupting things at the colleges where they're learning to become future right-wing conservative leaders and followers?" If that's their hope, it doesn't seem to be working.

But the stories of Jamie and Drew in the SAU bubble remind us that the activists on the Soulforce buses might manage to pop the bubble of other colleges for at least a moment to give those few Jamies or Drews at the other schools a chance to see that they're not alone.

According to anti-gay activist Gary Randall, Soulforce is scheduled to be in this area on April 11 to stage a protests within the bubbles of Seattle Pacific University and Northwest University in Kirkland.

On the other hand: The Advocate published its "College Guide for LGBT Students" in August before the current school year. It lists Tacoma's University of Puget Sound as one of the top twenty gay-friendly campuses in the country.

[Update:] After mediation, SAU and the transgender professor, Julie Nemecek, have agreed to a settlement of the discrimination suit she had filed against SAU. She will be "looking for other employment."

[See a digest of current gay news stories, feeds from prominent gay blogs, and a link list of local gay papers on our Squidoo Gay news page.]

Labels: activism, coming out, Gay, gay news, religion

After what seems like a bizarre delay from its February UK release, Mika's hit pop album Life In Cartoon Motion goes on sale in the US tomorrow.

If you're asking, "Who?" then you haven't been paying attention as a YouTube video of his song Grace Kelly along with heavy rotation on MTV gave his infection pop sound considerable virtual airplay starting late last year. You can hear several of his songs on his official MySpace site. (Find a collection of Mika's YouTube videos here.)

As his US publicity tour for the album picks up, we've seen another explosion of the web-search questions, "mika gay?" on our logs. It's a question his fans are still asking, but one that Mika is still declining to answer.

Andy Towle gave a guest blogger spot on Towleroad the other day to ArjanWrites, a blogger who's been on top of the Mika online phenom from the start, for an interesting interview with the pop singer/songwriter. Most of the interview is about something Mika clearly loves to talk about -- his music, and his attitude toward today's pop music, but Arjan also asks the question explicitly and gets what has become Mika's standard answer.

Rumors have been circulating about your own sexuality. Are you gay?

I don?t' really discuss that. I don?t feel I really need to. My music speaks for itself. I have total freedom with what I do musically and the way that I live my life. And I feel really comfortable with that.

Bizarre as this seems, Mika reports that some fans or would-be fans are so upset by his silence on the question that he's received email death threats. [link, again, via Towleroad]

Chart-topping singer Mika has revealed that he is getting death threats from fans - because he won't admit whether he is gay or not.

The 23-year-old singer, real name Mica Penniman, has told how he receives messages from people threatening to kill him over his sexuality.

Our reaction, translated into Gallactica-speak: What the frack? This is even more bizarre than the unaccountable popularity of the Idol shows that Mika tries to overcome or the incessant cable "news" coverage of the death of a fat one-time pinup model. Come on, now. How can any of this possibly matter that much?

Really, now. He's a pop phenom who displays a queer sensibility about his performance and his music. Isn't that enough. We can see and hear the sensibility. Does it matter all that much who he does or doesn't have sex with. Isn't that queer sensibility enough? Well... apparently not for some folks. He told the Telegraph,

"In order to survive I've shut up different parts of my life, and that's one of them, especially this early in my career, I don't really feel that it's necessary to know in terms of my music.

"Some people make records that are defined by their sexuality, but mine really are not. It does play a lot with campness. It has a theatricality to it. Why not? It's pop music.

"If you're 14-years-old and you're gay, well, just do whatever you want. I'm not confused and I don't have any barriers about the way I live my life. That's why I don't want to put it under the microscope."

And, really now. Isn't that enough? Sure, if he actually is gay, then it would probably be easier for him to just say so, like the Idol kid in Australia who finally ended long speculation down under to proclaim, "Yes, I am gay.... I'm looking forward to living a life with no barriers and not having to worry about saying the right thing."

That comes from Anthony Callea, 24, who has parlayed his appearances on Australian Idol into a best-selling pop career singing what appears to be typically Idol-like pop pablum.

And, so, fine... That's great for that guy that he doesn't have to play a silly role hiding who he is.

But why does it matter so much who a pop star has sex with. If Mika were to show up tomorrow with a female fiance on his arm, would that make his music any less of a relief from the usual pop drivel? It shouldn't matter. But, somehow, it does seem to matter too much to too many of us.

Labels: celebrities, coming out, Mika, music

In the week since former NBA player John Amaechi came out on ESPN, coverage that combined "gay" and "NBA" in a single story had started to ramp down. That is, until Wednesday's broadcast homophobic rant by former NBA star Tim Hardaway.

Ameachi said he wasn't suprised to hear about Hardaway's comments, "I don't need Tim's comments to realize there's a problem," Ameachi told an AP interviewer. "People said that I should just shut up and go away -- now they have to rethink that."

Seattle Times sports columnist Steve Kelly addresses the issue in a must read column in today's paper.

Excerpts:

We had a feeling when former NBA player John Amaechi came out as a gay man, the story ultimately would not be about him, but about us. ...

The truth is, instead of cautious players throwing around code words like "trust," we needed some incendiary comments like those from former NBA point guard Hardaway to ramp up the debate. ...

There's nothing like an athlete, or ex-athlete, announcing he or she is gay to bring all of the village idiots out of the closet. ...

And, at least now, maybe we can begin the kind of wide-ranging, visceral talk that needs to be talked.

It's time for all the players to stop using code words and speak from the heart.

The reaction to Hardaway's comments shouldn't be, "You can't say that." It should be, "How can you think that?"

How can NBA players be so ignorant?

Kelly concludes

We shouldn't give a flying flip about the sexual orientation of John Amaechi or anyone else. But we do.

Even though I wish he'd made the announcement while he was still playing and really exploded some stereotypes, I applaud Amaechi's courage.

The fact that John Amaechi is gay shouldn't be news.

The real news is how we're dealing with that news.

So true.

But Dan Savage has some great advice over on SLOG for those dealing with that news:

But so long as we conflate liking us -- or believing that Jeebus loves us too -- with granting us our fundamental civil rights, we make winning those civil rights that much more difficult.

Of course as more and more of us live openly -- with or without our full civil rights --the hatred and fear that people like Hardaway espouse becomes less prevalent and less socially acceptable. But not everyone is going to like us or approve of us, whatever the law says, however socially tolerant our society becomes. And it is precisely these people?the haters, the Hardaways -- that have to be made to understand that no one is going to force them to change their minds.

What should the gays say about Hardaway? If I were the spokesperson for a big gay group I would say something like this:

"Mr. Hardaway is entitled to his opinions -- and his prejudices. He is not entitled to live in a world or a United States that's free from homosexuals. We are 'in the world,' we always have been, and we always will be. And gays and lesbians should not be subject to discrimination because some people are homophobic anymore than African Americans should be subject to discrimination because some people are racist. But if Mr. Hardaway doesn't care to know associate with gay people in his private life, that is his right. It is also his loss."

Labels: coming out, news bites, sports

In its typically statistics-laden cover story today on gay teens coming out, USA Today offers a brief profile of 17-year old Kenmore student, Zach Lundin, who "has brought boyfriends to several dances at his high school in suburban Seattle."

Zach Lundin had been taught in church that homosexuality was wrong. "I spent a lot of time trying to convince myself I was straight," says Lundin, 17, of Kenmore, Wash. At age 14 he told his parents he was attracted to boys. "I said, 'I'm not going to lie to you anymore. This is what I'm really feeling.' "

His father, Roy Lundin, wasn't thrilled to hear the news. "Any parent who says his first reaction isn't 'Oh, no!' probably isn't telling the truth," he says.

"We felt some sadness. We just assumed we'd have a daughter-in-law someday and grandchildren. It becomes your disappointment, but it's a selfish disappointment. Now we've gotten past that.

"There are some parts of it that I'll never be comfortable with," he concedes, "but that doesn't mean I can't support Zach. I love him and I will support him."

The chart that (since this is USA Today) shows that Lundin may be lucky to have grown up here instead of, say, the plains states. A Gallup poll found that 66% of the population in the Pacific region (WA, OR, CA, HI, AK) "consider homosexuality acceptable" compared to only 38% in the plains states (Dakotas to Kansas, Iowa, and Missouri). New England was the most tolerant region at 69%.

The article sites evidence that gay and lesbian kids are coming out earlier and are often "more vocal."

Still, many continue to have a tough time. The worst off, experts say, are young people in conservative rural regions and children whose parents cannot abide having gay offspring. Taunting at school is still common. Cyber-bullying is "the new big thing," says Laura Sorensen of Affirmations Lesbian and Gay Community Center in Ferndale, Mich. "Kids are getting hate mail and taunts on MySpace or Facebook."

Those problems were highlighted by a recent study that found that up to 42% of homeless or runaway youth are gay.

Resources:
The Washington Gay-Straight Alliance Network
Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network, Washington [GLSEN]
Lambert House (Drop-in center for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth and their allies)

Labels: coming out, gay news, Seattle, Washington

One more, this one via Andrew Sullivan.

OutSports.com writer Jim Buzinski has a touching tribute to Anthony Castro, a young man who made it through a tough early life but died last week in a car crash.

Anthony was that rarest of people -- an athlete out to his team. In Anthony's case, he was out in high school to his football and wrestling teams, our two most macho team sports. It took guts to take such a step but Anthony never thought too much about it -- he was not ashamed of who he was and if you were uncomfortable, that was your problem.

[2/3/07:] ESPN.com has added another touching tribute to Castro in a superb column by LZ Granderson.

"He caught a lot of crap over the first six to nine months after coming out," says Phil Takacs, a Banning High counselor. "Sometimes he would come to my office and ask if he could just spend the rest of the day there. He would say that he couldn't take being called 'faggot' any more today and just needed a break. He even thought about quitting sports. But over time, Anthony just got tired of the other kids making him feel bad for who he was.

"One day he was in practice and one of the other wrestlers was giving him a bunch of crap about being gay. Anthony looked at the kid and said 'You have a problem with me; why don't we take this to the mat?' This guy wrestled in the heaviest division, but Anthony pinned him in less than 30 seconds. That guy never said anything else again."

...Takacs said that there are now 10 openly gay students at the school that he is aware of and that the community is a lot more tolerant.

"Anthony changed a lot of people's attitudes about gay people by simply having the strength to follow his heart," Takacs said.

Labels: coming out, gay news, link bites, sports

This list-making, as we said, is a popular way to fill pages of papers and magazines during the usually slow holiday news weeks.

Like us, B.A.R. in San Francisco picks marriage equality in a broad sense as its top story.

The status of LGBT relationships absolutely dominated the news throughout the year, with some development popping up virtually every week. While much of what occurred on marriage was discouraging, just about everything short of using that word seemed to be to be positive.

B.A.R.'s Bob Roehr notes that Massachusetts has maintained its equality of marriage opportunity despite concerted attempts by the governor, Mitt Romney, and anti-equality activists to overturn the law. Since Romney will soon be replaced by a Democrat who supports equality and because Massachusetts law makes it hellishly difficult to modify the commonwealth's constitution by initiative, marriage equality there will likely stick.

Court decisions, like the one here in Washington and in New York and New Jersey failed to find a constitutional basis for equality of marriage as such, but urged their state legislatures to find some way to give equal rights to all couples who want to be joined a civil contract.

Editors of Washington's daily newspapers also saw the court decision on marriage equality as a major story of the year. It came in at #7 on their top-ten list.

7. The Washington Supreme Court's divided and contentious decision to uphold the state's ban on gay marriage. In a 5-4 decision, the court said lawmakers have the power to restrict marriage to a man and a woman, and left intact the state's 1998 Defense of Marriage Act.

Both Towleroad and the Washington Blade conglomerate of gay papers took a different tack.

Andy Towle offers a list of the outs, ins, and in-betweens as his contribution to the EOY listmania. All the usual suspects are there: Lance Bass, Mark Foley, Neil Patrick Harris, Ted Haggard, and many more.

The Blade and its corporate brethren think that the continually shrinking closet was the big story of 2006. They note the Hollywood stars who came out and contrast the often easy and unremarkable reaction to that with the often-tortured responses to the more notorious political outings of the year.

Despite his best efforts to squelch rumors about his sexual orientation, Foley was widely considered an "openly closeted" politician, whereas few people seemed to have known about Ted Haggard's double life before it was exposed by a gay male escort. The contrast displays the "different levels of outness" that exist today, Shields said.

The sadness of the Ted Haggard story was that he was a liar and played on people's fears, and couldn't be true to who he was," Shields said. "I think what people saw there was a hypocrisy to the attacks that go on against gay and lesbian couples, and gay and lesbian families."

Former Blade editor Chris Crain, who now publishes a must-read gay blog, mostly agrees with the top-story pick of his erstwhile colleagues, but chastises them for their quotations and their political analysis of the situation.

The Foley story, especially, raised anew questions about when it's justified to "out" someone in government, whether they're holding elective office or not. For Ehrenstein and Rogers, there are no limits to be observed, no boundaries of personal privacy to be respected, and for Ehrenstein at least, dissent is tantamount to complicity. The Task Force's Foreman, as well, though not dirtying his own hands with outings, has publicly said he supports them.

But Crain, like the current Blade/Window Media editors, finds that the dynamics of the closet changed significantly in 2006.

As each new public figure emerges, there remain fewer "firsts" like Ellen DeGeneres in prime time or Elton John in music or Martina Navratilova in sport, to grab the biggest headlines. And so both Neil Patrick Harris ("Doogie Howser, M.D." and "How I Met Your Mother") and T.R. Knight ("Grey's Anatomy") continue to play sexually active heterosexual men in popular TV shows, despite coming out this year in People magazine. As the Blade story notes, popular culture is once again miles ahead of politics.

[If you don't use an RSS newsreader or don't know what that is, you can keep up with the headlines of Towleroad's frequent posts in our Squidoo Gay News lens. Crain is featured in our Squidoo Queer Commentary lens. Although we don't deserve mention in the same paragraph, our headlines are included in our Squidoo Gay Seattle lens.]

Edge, a new group of east-coast gay email/web publications, puts coming-out stories in three of its top-ten spots on their year end review. Marriage equality is their #2 story. But they pick the mid-term elections as the top LGBT story of the year.

At last there may be progress on legislation affecting members of the community that has languished in Congress for the last 12 years of Republican dominance. Gay rights activists are hopeful that the Employment Non-Discrimination Act will pass. The chances also are good that Congress will at least consider a bill to repeal of the ban on gays, lesbians and bisexuals serving openly in the military. Support to do away with Don't Ask, Don't Tell is growing among the public and lawmakers in both parties as the Pentagon finds it increasingly difficult to recruit enough men and women to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And, yes, there were web polls galore. The Malcontent asked their readers "Who's the villain? Donald or Rosie" Over 75% picked The Donald (and most of those votes came before his Mel Gibson moment with the "degenerate" comment in response to her "pimp" salvo).

When gay.com (yes, they offer more than just chat) asked its, umm..., readers (between chat sessions, no doubt) to pick the top stories of the year, they discovered the odd clicking prowess of Colbert Report fans (aka ColbertNation). The voters picked Stephen Colbert as person of the year and the Colbert Report as favorite TV show, surpassing even Project Runway. Gay.com did not reveal how many voters signed up just for that vote.

Finally, the gay.com vote gives us the excuse for that pic at the top of this post (queerfilter.com users who click on shirtless hunk posts gives us the wholly unjustified eye-candy reason [Those who feel cheated should click on the Jake pic or run our hunk-laden Rumor Machine]): Voters picked Jake Gyllenhaal as "Male celeb you most wish was gay". He won easily with 45% of the vote over Ryan Phillippe at 9% and Justin Timberlake at 8%.

Labels: Colbert Report, coming out, eye candy, gay news, marriage equality

Lambert House on 15th Ave marks its 15th anniversary this year as a supportive place for gay, lesbian, bi, transgender, queer, and/or questioning young people to congregate with each other and to get services that are often difficult for them to find.

In its continuing and laudible focus on LGBTQ issues, Capitol Hill Times profiles the house in this week's issue.

Gay boys, lesbian girls, transgenders and questioning youths age 14 to 22, can come to Lambert House six days a week. And they don't just come from Seattle. Participants come from all over King County and beyond...

Health services, such as free HIV testing and safer-sex education, are offered at Lambert House. Academic support, job skills training, support groups, social events, cultural series, creative activities, recreational outings and film series are examples of other activities that are available. Staff help GLBT youth meet basic and not-so-basic needs. That includes dinner prepared by supportive volunteers with lively conversations at the table with youth, staff and volunteers.
...
Youth play pool, use the Bohnett Cyber Center and enjoy quiet moments with a book in the well-stocked library. Some youth prefer listening to music. Music is, of course, an important part of youth culture and Lambert House is a place where participants can express themselves. A blackboard covers a wall where youth engage their creative spirit by sketching with colored chalks.

The kids at Lambert House also create and produce several events throughout the year including the Pink Prom, Summer is a Drag, and the Snowflake Festival.

Visit their website for more information about activities at the house, for volunteer information, or to donate to the non-profit.

The Capitol Hill Times includes this story under what we believe is a new section banner, calling the monthly feature section "Out and About" -- a name once used for the Lesbian Resource Center's newsletter.

Technorati tags: Seattle Gay Seattle LGBT organizations

Labels: coming out